Understanding Refugee Law in an Enlarged European Union Theory

The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe, what its effects are on state practice and refugee protection in the Baltic and Central European candidate countries, and what this process reveals about the framework used by scholars to understand the dynamics of international refugee law. Arguably, an exclusive focus on EU institutions and their dissemination of regional and international norms among candidate countries through the acquis communitaire is misleading. Looking at the subregional interplay between Vienna and Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, Copenhagen and Vilnius provides a richer understanding of the emergence of norms than the standard narrative of a Brussels dictate. Hence, to capture these dynamics, we will attempt to expand the framework of analysis by incorporating sub-regional settings, cutting across the divide between old and new Members, and by analysing the repercussions sent out by domestic legislation within these settings. While acknowledging that bilateral and multilateral relations are continuously interwoven, we conclude that bilateralism accounts for a greater degree of normative development and proliferation than multilateralism at EU level, and that domestic legislation as formed by sub-regional dynamics will remain the ultimate object of study for scholars of international refugee law.

Barriers to healthcare seeking, beliefs about cancer and the role of socio-economic position. A Danish population-based study

AbstractBackgroundCancer-related health behaviours may be affected by barriers to healthcare seeking and beliefs about cancer. The aim was to assess anticipated barriers to healthcare seeking and beliefs about cancer in a sample of the Danish population and to assess the association with socio-economic position.MethodsA population-based telephone interview with 3000 randomly sampled persons aged 30years or older was performed using the Awareness and Beliefs about Cancer measure from 31 May to 4 July 2011. The Awareness and Beliefs about Cancer measure includes statements about four anticipated barriers to healthcare seeking and three positively and three negatively framed beliefs about cancer. For all persons, register-based information on socio-economic position was obtained through Statistics Denmark.ResultsTwo anticipated barriers, worry about what the doctor might find and worry about wasting the doctor's time, were present among 27% and 15% of the respondents, respectively. Overall, a high proportion of respondents concurred with positive beliefs about cancer; fewer concurred with negative beliefs. Having a low educational level and a low household income were strongly associated with having negative beliefs about cancer.ConclusionThe fact that worry about what the doctor might find and worry about wasting the doctor's time were commonly reported barriers call for initiatives in general practice. The association between low educational level and low household income and negative beliefs about cancer might to some degree explain the negative socio-economic gradient in cancer outcome

Doctor and practice characteristics associated with differences in patient evaluations of general practice

BACKGROUND: Variation in patients' evaluation due to general practitioner (GP) and practice factors may provide information useful in a quality improvement context. However, the extent to which differences in patients' evaluation of the GPs are associated with differences in GP and practice characteristics must also be ascertained in order to facilitate comparison of adjusted patient evaluations between GPs. The aim of this study was to determine such associations in a setting where GPs serve a list of patients and act as gatekeepers. METHODS: We carried out a patient evaluation survey among voluntarily participating GPs using the EUROPEP questionnaire, which produced 28,260 patient evaluations (response rate 77.3%) of 365 GPs. In our analyses we compared the prevalence of positive evaluations in groups of GPs. RESULTS: Our principal finding was a negative association between the GP's age and the evaluation of all aspects, except accessibility. We also found an association between the way the practice was organised and the patients' evaluation of accessibility, with GPs in single-handed practices getting far the most positive evaluations. Long weekly working hours were associated with more positive evaluations of all dimensions except accessibility, whereas more than 0.5 full-time employees per GP, a higher number of listed patients per GP and working in a training practice were associated with negative evaluation of accessibility. CONCLUSION: GP characteristics are mainly associated with patients' experience of interpersonal aspects of care, while practice characteristics are associated with evaluation of accessibility. These differences need to be accounted for when comparing patient evaluations of different practices

General practitioner characteristics and delay in cancer diagnosis. a population-based cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Delay in cancer diagnosis may have serious prognostic consequences, and some patients experience delays lasting several months. However, we have no knowledge whether such delays are associated with general practitioner (GP) characteristics. The aim of the present study was to analyse whether GP and practice characteristics are associated with the length of delay in cancer diagnosis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study was designed as a population-based cohort study. The setting was the County of Aarhus, Denmark (640,000 inhabitants). Participants include 334 GPs and their 1,525 consecutive, newly diagnosed cancer patients. During one year (September 2004 to August 2005), patients with incident cancer were enrolled from administrative registries. GPs completed questionnaires on the patients' diagnostic pathways and on GP and practice characteristics. Delay was categorised as patient-related (more than 60 days), doctor-related (more than 30 days) and system-related (more than 90 days). The associations between delay and characteristics were assessed in a logistic regression model using odds ratios (ORs).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>No GP characteristics (seniority, practice organization, list size, participation in continuing medical education, job satisfaction and level of burnout) were associated with doctor delay. Patients of female GPs more often had a short <it>patient delay </it>than patients of male GPs (OR 0.44, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) 0.28 to 0.71). Patients whose GPs provided many services (OR 0.66, 95%CI 0.44 to 0.95) and patients attending GPs with little former knowledge of their patients (OR 0.68, 95%CI 0.47 to 0.99) more often experienced a short <it>system delay </it>than patients attending GPs with less activity and more knowledge of their patients. Patients listed with a female GP more often experienced a long system delay than patients of male GPs (OR 1.50, 95%CI 1.02 to 2.21). Finally, patients with low GP-reported compliance more often experienced a long system delay (OR 1.73, 95%CI 1.07 to 2.80) than patients with higher compliance.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>GP characteristics were not statistically significantly associated with doctor delay. However, some GP characteristics were associated with patient and system delay, which indicates that these factors may be important for understanding patient delay (e.g. perceived GP accessibility and the GP-patient relationship) and system delay (e.g. the GP's experience and opportunities for referring and coordinating diagnostic work-up).</p

Cancer-before-cancer

Approaching the presence of cancer in everyday life in terms of mythologies, the article examines what cancer is and how cancer-related potentialities are enacted and embodied in the context of contemporary regimes of anticipation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a suburban Danish middle-class community among people who were not immediately afflicted by cancer, we describe different and paradoxical cancer mythologies and show how they provide multiple ways of understanding, anticipating, and dealing with cancer in everyday life. Special attention is paid to the relation between biomedically informed notions of symptoms and bodily processes, and a ghostly and muted presence of cancer, particularly when people are faced with more tangible cancer worries. We explore how contemporary cancer disease-control strategies emphasising ‘symptom awareness’ interweave with and add to cancer mythologies. We suggest that these strategies also carry moral significance as directives (be aware of early signs of cancer and seek care in time), and create an unintended illusion of certainty that does not correspond with everyday embodied forms of uncertainty and ambiguity. We argue that paying attention to the continuous cultural configurations of cancer that exist ‘before cancer’ will increase understanding of how the public health construction of ‘cancer awareness’ relates to everyday health practices such as symptom experience and health care seeking